GamerGate, Part 2: Videogames Meet Feminism

This is an anti-authoritarian rebellion, not an antiwoman backlash.

In my previous article, I tried to make sense of the "GamerGate" drama, which its detractors have described as a sexist male backlash against women in the videogame culture and which its supporters see as a pushback against cronyism and political correctness in the gaming media. The saga continues, with front-page coverage for threats against feminist gaming critics—notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, who canceled a lecture on a Utah campus due to an email threat of a massacre—and with female GamerGaters taking to the online airwaves to give their side. Amidst the charges and countercharges of harassment, thought policing, and unethical conduct, the GamerGate debate always comes back to gender issues. There are valid concerns, shared by at least some GamerGate supporters, about sex-based harassment in gaming groups and stereotypical portrayal of female characters in videogames. Unfortunately, critics of sexism in videogame culture tend to embrace a toxic brand of feminism that promotes antagonism, grievance, and intolerance of dissent, not equality or empowerment.

There is no question that gaming is a male-oriented scene. Those who fault the videogame industry for shortchanging female consumers cite a 2013 report showing that 45 percent of Americans who play videogames are female; but others counter that this includes people who play casual games such as Angry Birds or Candy Crush on their smartphones, and that the market for PC and console games does skew heavily male. In a recent survey of incoming college freshmen, nearly 13 percent of the young men said they had usually spent over 15 hours a week playing video or computer games in their senior year of high school; only two percent of the women did. Other data show more female participation in gaming, though nowhere near parity: in a recent study by Flurry Analytics, women accounted for a quarter of "first person shooter" players and more than a third of those who play role-playing action games.

There are many anecdotal tales of female players encountering hostility and harassment in online gaming communities—from explicitly sexist putdowns of their skills to lewd comments or even threats. This is supported by a 2012 survey by blogger Emily Matthew, distributed through gaming sites and the social media and answered by 499 men and 356 women. Nearly two-thirds of the women—63 percent—reported having experienced "sex-based taunting, harassment, or threats while playing video games online"; fewer than 16 percent of the men did. (In the general population, women are only slightly more likely than men to report sexual harassment online.)

Mathew's survey has its limitations, including selection bias—respondents had to volunteer to answer it, and women who had encountered sexism may have been more likely to do so—and lack of data on frequency of harassment. Women may also be more likely to perceive certain taunts as sexist, whether it's a crude taunt, an slur on one's looks, or "rape" as a synonym for trouncing an opponent (also used by female and even feminist gamers). Tanya McDermott, a British gamer who disagrees with feminist critiques of gaming culture, also argues on her blog that most sexist insults are simply a form of "smack talk" and that men get abused just as much, only in different ways: Players who taunt rivals in a competitive atmosphere will zero in on any vulnerable spot, which includes being "the girl" in a mostly male group. While McDermott makes some good points about group dynamics, it's easy to see how such behavior—regardless of motive—can create an environment where many women feel like second-class citizens. One in ten women in Mathew's survey said they had quit an online game because of gender-based harassment, compared to two percent of men; concerns about harassment also led many women to obscure their gender or avoid playing on some or all public sites.

That said, Mathew's findings hardly paint male gamers in general as woman-haters or Neanderthals. Men and women in her sample were almost equally likely—10 percent and 7 percent—to admit that they had used sexist slurs while gaming. Slightly more than half, men and women alike, said they had actively intervened to stop such behavior. Mathew herself called these results "heartening." While she also reported receiving 22 abusive comments in response to her survey (eight of them containing sexual slurs), these made up fewer than 4 percent of all male responses.

The other issue cited by critics of sexism in videogames—representation of women as characters—is even more complex and rife with incomplete and misleading information. For instance, a recent BBC News story on sexism in videogames says that only one of the top 25 best-selling videogames of 2013 had a female protagonist (Tomb Raider's Lara Croft); a 2013 Guardian article cites a study by the videogame market research firm EEDAR showing that only 24 of 669 titles released in 2012 featured an exclusively female lead. Technically, both these claims are accurate, and they seem to paint a picture of a video landscape populated almost entirely by male heroes and passive female characters who are there to be rescued and romanced.

But "technically accurate" doesn't always mean "true." What's left out is that some of the 2013 best-sellers, such as Saints Row IV, allow players to customize the lead character as male or female; others, such as Assassin's Creed IV and Lego Marvel Super-Heroes, have multiple playable characters of both sexes, while Minecraft features a genderless Lego-like player figure. In the EEDAR sample, nearly half of the games had a female-protagonist option. Highly popular games with an optional female lead include Skyrim, Fallout, and Mass Effect; in the latter, even male gamers often chose the female-protagonist option, apparently due to the female voice actor's impressive performance.

The real hot-button issue in feminist videogame criticism is not the shortage of female protagonists but the sexual objectification of female characters who, critics say, are routinely treated as eye candy for the "male gaze." It would be silly to deny that female characters in videogames are often sexualized—certainly not always, but far more than male ones and sometimes to an extreme degree. Videogame journalist Georgina Young, who leans pro-GamerGate and is skeptical of the feminist critiques, agrees that "you only have to look at the breast mechanics in Team Ninja's Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball 2 trailer to realize that no woman had any hand in its developing or marketing process" and that many games that could appeal to women have visuals designed with men in mind.

The problem is that criticism focused on the sexualization of female characters often hinges on subjective perception—one feminist's sexually empowered woman is another's sex toy—and can easily turn to sex-shaming. Bayonetta, featuring an over-the-top, deliberately hypersexualized female super-fighter, has been slammed as exploitative by critics including Sarkeesian. Yet in a 2012 guest post on the ThinkProgress.org blog of left-wing feminist Alyssa Rosenberg, writer Tony Palumbi defended the game as an exercise in exuberant girl-power and wrote that its detractors were "wrapped up in a confining vision of the liberated female: one where sex needn't define any part of a woman, and flaunted sexuality is inherently a concession to the male gaze."

While such critiques often have a strong undercurrent of hostility to male sexual desire, they can also come across as attacks on women who don't toe the line. In 2011, after the designer of Skullgirls, a fighting game with miniskirted, busty anime-style heroines, objected to charges of sexism and noted that the lead animator was female, a feminist "geek culture" site, The Mary Sue, mocked him in a post suggesting that "this unnamed animator" was either non-existent or not allowed to speak for herself. A quick check could have revealed that she is a successful videogame artist, Mariel Cartwright, who had blogged about her work on Skullgirls on the game's website. More recently, actress Erin Fitzgerald, who voices "the Sorceress," one of the playable leads in a game called Dragon's Crown, posted a scathing response to those who were attacking the game as sexist because of her powerful character's large, undulating breasts. (All the Dragon's Crown characters have stylized, exaggerated physiques.)

When gamers complain about too much feminist criticism of sexism and misogyny in videogames, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that they themselves harbor misogynist attitudes. But another explanation is that much of this criticism relies on manufactured outrage and cherry-picked, distorted, or out-of-context information.

For instance: three years ago, there was a major outcry over alleged misogyny in Batman: Arkham City, particularly the portions in which the player character is Catwoman. The cause of this outrage was that Catwoman is repeatedly called "bitch" and supposedly threatened with rape by various anonymous thugs.

In actuality, the "rape threats" consist of a couple of sexualized taunts such as "Nice suit! Now take it off!" and the line, "You're mine"—which is also directed at Batman elsewhere in the game. (The entire Catwoman play-through can be seen in two YouTubevideos.) Both these comments and the word "bitch" are mostly spoken just before Catwoman pummels her enemies into the ground— prompting one author on Kotaku, a gaming site sympathetic to "social justice" causes, to speculate that the writers "aren't comfortable portraying fearsome female characters without having the male characters attempt to belittle them." But surely it's at least as plausible that these impotent attempts to belittle her underscore Catwoman's power. Incidentally, no one made much of the fact that in one of Batman's fights, a thug taunts, "I'm gonna make you my bitch, Wayne"—which is probably closer to a "rape threat" than any of the remarks to Catwoman.

Perhaps most ironically, when the next Batman videogame, Arkham Origins, toned down the language to remove the B-word, one feminist blogger crowed victory—despite admitting that the game also took away the option of playing as a female character ("You win some, you lose some"). As they say, this is why we cannot have nice things.

Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women videos, which feature prominently in the debate about videogames, feminism and sexism, are full of selective and skewed analysis—one that neglects positive female images, ignores examples of male characters getting the same treatment she considers sexist for women, and attacks games for encouraging deadly violence toward female characters when killing those characters is actually the "bad" option that causes player to lose points. (A fairly detailed three–part discussion of the flaws in Sarkeesian's critique was posted a few weeks ago on Gamesided.com; for upfront disclosure, the first part quotes from an old column of mine criticizing radical anti-sex feminist Andrea Dworkin, on whose theories Sarkeesian sometimes relies.) It should go without saying that the biased shoddiness of Sarkeesian's arguments does not in any way excuse the online harassment toward her, let alone violent threats. But the harassment should not preclude a critical examination of her critique—instead of the largely unquestioning adulation it has received from the elite gaming media.

Another problem is that in its current form, feminist gaming criticism tolerates no disagreement. In 2012, Brendan Keogh, a journalist who writes for leading gaming media including Gamasutra and Polygon, posted a rant on his personal blog denouncing the controversial trailer for the game Hitman: Absolution, in which the lead character battles and kills a group of female assassins who arrive disguised as nuns, then strip off their robes to reveal tight neoprene outfits. "Infuriated" and "upset" by the fact that not everyone found the trailer offensive, Keogh asserted that it its combination of sexual titillation and violence was a classic example of "rape culture"—"the means by which our society keeps women subservient to men by constantly reminding them that if they step out of line…men will rape them and put them back in their place." When some commenters questioned the existence of a "rape culture" in America, Keogh promptly deleted their posts, announcing that he refused to tolerate "denialism." (Recently, he compared GamerGate supporters to 9/11 "Truthers.")

A couple of days later, the online videogame magazine Kill Screen posted a short essay by writer Michael Thomsen titled "What Is Rape Culture, and Do Videogames Have One?", disputing Keogh's thesis and defending the right to create scandalous art. After a firestorm in the comments and in the social media, the editors of Kill Screen not only amended the title of the article "for insensitivity," changing it to "On the Messy Morality of Hitman: Absolution," but also posted this note at the top:

"We've since apologized for this piece. We can't retract because this is an opinion, not news, which is part of problem. Also, we believe that we should keep our mistakes live. Please accept our deepest apologies."

In this kind of atmosphere, it's not surprising that many people aren't very keen on having discussions of gender and sexism. Sabrina Harris, the British tech writer and longtime gamer who supports GamerGate, told me in an email:

Many gaming publications have, over the past few years, demonised any attempt to evaluate the arguments of women involved in gaming criticism, no matter how idiotic or demonstrably false the things they say can be. If you're a man criticising a woman, you're sexist. If you're a woman criticising a woman, you have internalised misogyny. There is no allowing for discussion with the kind of people writing these articles: you agree with their worldview or you are a bigot. Personally, I feel #GamerGate is a result of this shameful attitude being pushed by those in the gaming media with positions of power for a prolonged period of time.

While it is commonly argued that feminist criticism seeks only to examine "problematic" media, not to deny anyone the right to enjoy them, the language employed by the critics often suggests otherwise. Sarkeesian says that refers to videogames depictions of women being "harmful," "dangerously irresponsible," and related to real-life negative attitudes toward women and possibly even violence. A feminist videogame designer says that sexualized depictions of women in videogames are "unacceptable." In a recent blogpost chastising gamers who dislike "social justice warriors," writer and comedian Joseph Scrimshaw offers a condescending explanation of their anger as motivated by "fear": "If you admit some of the videogames you like are objectifying women, you might have to stop playing them." Even more condescendingly, he goes on to speculate that the people who harbor this fear are worried that they will also have to treat women as equals in real life.

This moralism is all the more obnoxious since it is directed exclusively toward men. No one is telling women in female-dominated fandoms (based on television shows, for instance) that they might have to stop making or enjoying fan art and videos that blatantly objectify men, or even posting pornographic fanfiction about their favorite actors.

"I do think such issues as sexism exist in gaming," Harris, who considers herself a feminist of the pro-equality kind, told me in our email exchange. "I do think issues such as sexism exist in gaming, as they do in most other areas of life. Unfortunately, much of the discussion is framed in a very black and white way, i.e. 'this is sexist, and if you don't agree you are a sexist.' This type of discussion is very unproductive and creates polarisation between groups that can actually have middle ground on the issue. I feel that with more reasoned, less hysterical discussion, we could contribute to making games more progressive where they need to be."

Any backlash against radical feminism is likely to serve as a magnet for people who are genuine misogynists, such as pro-GamerGate lawyer Mike Cernovich whose numerous vile tweets were exposed by GamerGate opponent Matt Binder. But after following the #GamerGate tag closely for several weeks, I see no evidence that people like Cernovich—of whom I had never heard until I saw Binder's post—are influential in the movement. This is an anti-authoritarian rebellion, not an antiwoman backlash.

A version of this article appeared at RealClearPolitics. This version contains corrections.

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Report abuses.

Why would they do anything? They don’t actually care about games or technology. They care about activism and feminism, and games just happen to be a useful issue right now because it has more males than females and it’s visual.

Perhaps most ironically, when the next Batman videogame, Arkham Origins, toned down the language to remove the B-word, one feminist blogger crowed victory?despite admitting that the game also took away the option of playing as a female character (“You win some, you lose some”). As they say, this is why we cannot have nice things.

Well-said. Or written, I guess. I’ve asked many times – and never gotten a satisfactory answer – what makes having people regularly watching (or perhaps worse, taking very seriously) professional sports, as most American adults to some extent do, so much more mature than playing videogames. Most American adults have hobbies that are clearly, if they were only honest with themselves, every bit as ‘immature’ as playing video games.

What is your source for that? How is gamer defined? Is someone who plays Bejeweled or Angry Birds a couple of times per week a gamer? I think a more interesting question would be this: Of the games which feminists object to, how many of their players are male and what is the average player’s age?

I tune out automatically when I see the word feminist. If you really care about equality call yourself something gender neutral. I don’t know, equalicist or libertyist. Quasi-related rant: most jobs went gender neutral, mail carrier, fire fighter, etc…, but we still call nurses nurse. That’s pretty much a female dominated act. Why not health coordinators? Male RN’s are still underrepresented, where are the calls for scholarships for men to go into nursing? /rant off

SNL did a sketch in 1989 called Matt Stevers, Male Nurse. (“Dammit, he cares!”) Robert Wagner was the title character. My recollection is that it was funny, but unfortunately I could find only this image, not a clip.

I think the reasoning goes like this: Men have more ‘stuff’ than women, ergo even any stuff taken away from men and given to women (even if women already have more of that type of stuff) is a step toward ‘equality’ and any stuff given to men (even if they have less of that type of stuff than women) is a step away from ‘equality.’ And since women have infinitely less stuff than men, this pattern of expropriation goes on for eternity. Hence why even (or rather especially) in a country like Sweden they are still demanding more stuff.

Have a look at the people stoking this controversy: Wu, Sarkeesian, and Quinn. They are political science majors, journalism majors, and college dropouts. Sarkeesian has never developed any technology, Wu has produced one unsuccessful and boring video game, and Quinn’s Depression Quest is a bunch of web pages and doesn’t even deserve the name.

These are not “women in technology”, they are disgruntled liberal arts majors on a crusade against anything tech related who happen to use the “women” and “feminist” angle as cover for their attacks. And disgruntled liberal arts majors in the media and politics are eating it up.

I’d really like to hear from women who work successfully in the technical part of the field – not journalists or activists – but the women who work developing, designing, coding actively and successfully in the field.

Stating the obvious, anytime an environment is dominated by one gender the “atmosphere” tends to tilt towards the dominate gender’s cultural language/habits. This site being one example. The homeschool board I used to frequent being another opposite example.

Regarding the physical characteristics of certain female characters, the over the top, exagerated physique is a hallmark of the style. Look at the muscles on some of the male characters, the weapons that are used, etc. They defy all physiology and basic physics.

More generally, though, why is it a bad or surprising thing that heterosexual males like images of females that emphasize their sexuality and attractiveness? Pretty much every woman I know likes images of men that emphasize the qualities that they find attractive. Some goes for gay men and gay women. It’s called a libido. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Ah, but Western Feminists hate all evidence of male heterosexual response. To be fair, I think a good deal of this is a reaction to The Playboy Philosophy, which (if you go back and read mens’ magazines from the 60’s and early ’70’s, was frankly a little creepy). But the whole “Rape Culture” nonsense is so divorced from reality that it makes the Feminists ridiculous.

Rape Culture? Really? And you aren’t talking about the treatment of women in Islamic countries and cultures? Go retire to your fainting couch. Now.

I can totally believe that certain segments of society take a very misogynistic view of women. We should try to change that. But to assert that there is a

“”rape culture”?the means by which our society keeps women subservient to men by constantly reminding them that if they step out of line?men will rape them and put them back in their place.”

and to claim that this permeates the whole of society just seems absurd.

The only way I can make sense of that is by defining our whole society by YouTube comments and the like. Either that, or I’m living in one hell of a bubble. And it is still a huge leap to think that YouTube and Twitter comments represent threats of actual, real world actions. That’s not to condone them, but come on, look at this with some perspective.

A friend of a friend commented on Facebook that she believes all of the college freshmen she teaches are of this misogynistic view. When I asked if this was a gross generalization, she said no, this is what she believes. To support it, she said she tried to explain feminism to an audience of “glaring, arms-crossed boys”. What was she *actually* teaching? Nineteenth century British literature.

Some folks don’t get that when a guy steps into a class on one subject, and is then subject to sermonizing on something wholly unrelated which paints them as an oppressor, it gets a bit tiresome.

To support it, she said she tried to explain feminism to an audience of “glaring, arms-crossed boys”. What was she *actually* teaching? Nineteenth century British literature.

She’s fortunate she didn’t have any students in that group who were mature/assertive/experienced enough to just tell her:

“I am paying you to teach 19th century British literature. I am not paying you to lecture on feminism, for which there is an entire women’s studies department that I can consult in the unlikely event I become interested. I suggest that you do what you are being paid to do, and start teaching 19th century British literature.”

She said she was teaching Mary Wollstonecraft, so I mistakenly though Mary Shelley and wondered where feminism came into play with Frankenstein. I then looked her up and realized it was Mary Shelley’s mother, who at no point would have been considered a literary figure of any notoriety.

== I can totally believe that certain segments of society take a very misogynistic view of women. We should try to change that. ==

I disagree.

I think women have brought it on themselves. If you take a fresh look at today’s society, it’s largely anti-male. At the same time, it provides substantially greater resources for women, sending the bulk of the bill to working men.

Misogynists may be the only ones seeing the picture clearly. Women ARE to blame for a great deal of what’s wrong in America today – and if you hate Obama, hate the soaring debt and irresponsible “I still have checks in my checkbook so how can I be broke??” economic policy, then it’s not a stretch to hate those most responsible: women.

In short, if women don’t like the hostile response they get from their attacks on males and their gross irresponsibility, the answer is not for men to be less hostile to women, but for women to change their behavior.

What we see in the article above is women throwing a tantrum. The proper response is to ignore the bitches.

Videogame journalist Georgina Young, who leans pro-GamerGate and is skeptical of the feminist critiques, agrees that “you only have to look at the breast mechanics in Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball 2 trailer to realize that no woman had any hand in its developing or marketing process” and that many games that could appeal to women have visuals designed with men in mind.

So women can’t enjoy a video game with sexy female characters? Why? Is there something offensive about the fact that men like large breasts and slim waists on a gal? Should all the women characters be homely and pear-shaped instead? How would that contribute to anyone’s enjoyment of the game, male or female? I don’t get it.

I don’t find either of those terribly satisfying, really. Doesn’t 1)amount to saying that women are emotionally and psychologically fragile and the gaming industry needs to be sensitive to that by not subjecting them to images of women that are sexier than they are. That seems pretty sexist, in and of itself.

I think the exact issue in this case, is that a Beach Volleyball game is seen by the commentator as one that could have cross-gender appeal, but the execution of the particular Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball game was intentionally designed to be a titular experience that emphasized the overt sexuality of the female characters of the game series.

Her point is not that woman can not enjoy a game with sexy female characters, but that perhaps a game that could potentially have cross-gender appeal (Beach Volleyball) could be designed in such a way to have cross-gender appeal (more realistic characters, bikinis, male characters, etc) and not be completely niche marketed at boys and men aged 16-25.

I agree, personally I think gaming is already broad enough that it supports many different genres and niche markets. From the blockbuster titles that mostly cater to men 15-35 to the casual puzzle games that skew towards the female market 25-45.

The big arguments in the industry are all centered around the large money titles, though. Which is the space this whole “gender” controversy is being fought over.

And that is where they show their complete lack of understanding re: capitalism. The executives and developers didn’t just sit in a board room smoking cigars and joke about how women should all have big tits, small waists, not talk, and bounce around a beach volleyball court. But you can guarantee that’s what they think went on.

Her point is not that woman can not enjoy a game with sexy female characters, but that perhaps a game that could potentially have cross-gender appeal

Every major game I have played in the last half dozen years has had kick-ass male and female characters, young, old, muscular, skinny, fat, pretty and ugly. Many of them even have a few gay characters and don’t object anymore when you go for same-sex plotlines.

Many men play the female characters, and many women play the male characters anyway because it’s fun and you get a whole new set of abilities. Hassling players because of their gender makes little sense because you often don’t even know what it is.

Mainstream games have been falling all over themselves to appeal to everybody and be inclusive for years, for the simple reason that they want to sell to 99% of the market, not to 50%; these activists are whining and complaining about a non-existent problem.

Literally the only game with big tits, big asses, tiny waists, and no male characters that I have seen in several years was the game developed by one of the GamerGate feminists.

I’m female, a software developer, and though I don’t give games much time anymore, I used to really enjoy them 15-20 years ago.

Played a lot of Duke Nukem 3D, among other FPSs, in LAN games back in the ’90s. Objectifying imagery abounded; there was even a level with a strip club featuring mostly-naked (female, just in case that wasn’t obvious) pole dancers. Whom you could shoot. Whom I always shot, every time I played.

WHO CARES? It was a fun game. I can’t believe the amount of time and server space this fucking death-boring GamerGate non-issue has sucked out of the planet.

Do you know what to do if some or other batcaver-basement-dwelling toolbelt starts threatening you online, “doxxing” you, telling you they’re going to harm you in some way? Do you move out of your house, upend your life, sniveling and literally making a federal case out of it? No. You buy a gun, you learn how to use it, and you reply to the harassers, “Come and get it, bitch. Momma’s got something for you if you ever do show up on my property or lay a finger on me.”

The cognitive dissonance of militant feminists, it should cause actual pain. We want all of the benefits of personal responsibility but none of the messy wetwork. We want to be treated as adult equals, but we still want someone to come along and protect us from the ugliness of the big bad world. PROTECT YOUR DAMNED SELVES, taste some equality.

“For instance: three years ago, there was a major outcry over alleged misogyny in Batman: Arkham City.. he cause of this outrage was that Catwoman is repeatedly called “bitch” and supposedly threatened with rape by various anonymous thugs.”

There is something very wrong with these people when they are upset that VILLAINS in a video-game (or any media) do not uphold social justice values.

It’s not a libido issue. It’s an organic escapist Rorschach realm and feminist project their issues on it.

Everybody wants to be indefatigable, master endless technologies, collect unnamed runes of power, use weapons with bottomless magazines and power cells to mow down the Nazi cannibal zombie horde before facing down Mephistopheles single-handed armed only with the spear of destiny and their wits.

If the above protagonist were female, feminists would complain that Mephistopheles is traditionally male and the predominantly male Nazi zombie cannibal horde is unfairly violent against the protagonist. If the protagonist were male and all the antagonists were female, the obvious complaint is the wholesale slaughter of women by a lone protagonist male. If the protagonist and all possible imaginary characters were converted to abstract genderless representations and the Nazis zombie cannibal horde were balanced to the exact gender ratios of Nazi Germany, feminists would complain about the under-representation of women in the Nazi party.

Not to mention that if they made 50% of the villains women, or had the female villains make remarks about castration or whatever to male protagonists, you can bet the feminists would complain just as much about the ‘negative portrayal of women.’

This moralism is all the more obnoxious since it is directed exclusively toward men.

How dare you say such a sexist, misogynistic thing Ms. Young!/sarcasm]

The simple fact is that this is yet another attempt by entitled feminist shrews to make sure there are no “safe places” for boys/men to gather that they cannot destroy. Any hobby that is dominated by boys/men will have to be ‘cleansed’ so as to appeal to NO ONE, thereby dying an agonizing death. The Social Justice Warriors and their White-Knight dirtbag camp followers favorite punching bags du jour are the supposed ‘Peter Pan Man-Boys’ who inhabit hobbies like videogames, comic books and tabletop role-playing games.

The hilariously ironic thing is that men were told that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle and we took the hint: we went our own way. Now, however, for these insecure, narcissistic douchecanoes, its not enough. Nope, now they have to make sure we’re under their thumb. Its not surprising to me anymore the totalitarian tendencies of these Social Justice Warrior-types. The echo chamber they live in reinforces their idiotic views that people cannot be left to themselves.

The irony is, in western societies, MEN have made life safe for women to be obnoxious, insulting and destructive. What American MEN built in 200 years, American WOMEN will destroy in 100 years.

John Lott wrote a paper on women voting and the explosion of deficits. He makes an overwhelming case that women are responsible for runaway debt at the state and federal levels.

Oddly, when the system collapses due to all the spending of money we don’t have, it is likely to become quite unstable (read:unsafe). When that happens, women want men like a drowning victim wants a life preserver. Here’s hoping men charge women the appropriate penalty for their destructiveness. (A good start would be the repeal of the 19th Amendment).)

I’m a female gamer and I’m totally fine with hot women and big boobs in video games….especially when they have big guns or big swords too. I play a lot of games that are mostly marketed toward males….just so happens my interests skew that way. Feminists should go play fucking candy crush if they can’t handle it and shut up.

Exactly. Also to be honest I play Halo and nobody even really talks anymore and even when they did back in the Halo 2&3 days I can’t remember any instance of anyone saying sexist or violent things to me. If they did I probably said fuck off and kept moving. Also there is this thing called the mute button. Plus when I do speak most people assume I’m a 12 year old boy before they think I’m an adult female anyway. Who cares just play the damn game.

My wife finally found out about #gamergate and jumped all in my face when I had the temerity to not instantly agree with her condemnation of the evil men from 4Chan that started it all.

She absolutely refused to listen when I tried to calmly explain to her that while the #gamergate guys were idiots it was entirely driven by a natural response to the ridiculous over the top feminist attacks on video games designed to appeal to men.

Honestly I’m about ready to tell her that she needs to get the fuck off Facebook or I am leaving her because the bullshit she is soaking up there is rapidly turning my once reasonable and even mostly libertarian wife into a dangerous rad fem

The gentlemen of 4Chan are generally losers in normal society. So I have nothing but derisive laughter toward anyone who gets offended by them and takes them seriously. The day of the unpopular kids has arrived and the popular kids are butthurt. It’s great.

I feel the same way. It’s funny, because I have no qualms about disagreeing with an avid male socialist; the most he’ll do is argue with me. But so often with feminist-leaning woman, no matter how politely, calmly, and rationally you state your disagreement, the reponse will be a single dry heave, the blood rushing to her head, an “Oh. My. God” followed by an unintelligible rant.

Suggest to an urban, educated woman who makes 100,000 a year that she should she should have to pay for her own abortions, and you’re liable to get more hostility than you would after trying to convince a Jew that Hitler wasn’t so bad.

Not quite. My impression is that the feminists were the hangers on of the popular crowd. As they got a little older, they got it in their head that this was a little way of asserting their authority and moving to the center of the circle. They’re basically living out their high school issues.

I’ve said for a while now that I think we’d all be surprised to find out exactly who is doing most of the nasty name-calling and “slut-shaming” towards women online. I’m certain we’d find a LOT of them are women.

As to your actual relationship issue, you have to decide if the relationship is more important than GamerGate. If it is, just don’t engage her. If she pushes you explain that you would rather not fight. She’s more likely to change if you act like how you want her to act.

Oh Gamergate isn’t the issue, we’ve been married far too long to let something like that blow up into something major.

Lets just say it is starting to become a trend of her buying into the bullshit radfems spew and the real question is how far down that rabbit hole will she go and how far can I tolerate putting up with the bullshit it produces before I have to get out for either my sanity or safety.

Btw, if you haven’t yet you should definitely tell her how the change in her behavior has affected your relationship. If she cares about you at all she’ll pay attention, even if she seems argumentative at first.

I mean that. Ignore her for as long it takes for her to realize she fucked up. Attention is like crack to women.

Ignore her. Don’t fuck her. Don’t say a word to her.

It’s 1000% more effective than arguing. You’ll never win an argument with a wife like that but they’ll bend over backwards trying to get your attention if you deprive them of it completely.

My grandpa realized this so whenever grandma got on her high horse he just ignored her. One time he went two weeks without saying a word to her, which made her so upset she started crying and apologizing.

I’ll glom on to the prior advice, however, and add this. If she’s actually willing to have a reasonable discussion, engage with her. If she’s not, tell her that you’re not going to argue with someone who can’t disagree rationally, calmly, and civilly. It’ll piss her right off, son, lemme tell ya!!

The best is if she’s had anything to drink prior. Drop some, “Ok, well, maybe we shouldn’t talk about this after you’ve been drinking. You’re getting really hostile.” WAHAHAHAHAH!!! GOLD!!!

Cathy, Cathy, Cathy, didn’t you get the message? Whenever gamergaters are criticized as misogynist, they reply that it is not about feminism at all – it’s about “ethics in game journalism”! All that about gender is completely incidental! That is what they say. So thank you Cathy for agreeing with us feminists about what GamerGate really is.

Don’t lock eyes with ’em, don’t do it. Puts ’em on edge. They might go into berzerker mode; come at you like a whirling dervish, all fists and elbows. You might be screaming “No, no, no” and all they hear is “Who wants cake?” Let me tell you something: They all do. They all want cake.

Or how about the fact that the only SJW response to the gamergate critique of journalism is… Misogyny. Have they even tried to deny the allegations about the close relationship between Zoey Quinn and game journalists? Have they denied the made up twitter threats? Have they even acknowledged that gamergate has tracked down the IP address of the latest Sakeesian death threats?

Actually, what we say is more like “It’s about ethics in games journalism, but since you decided to come at me like a rabid racoon screaming ‘MISOGYNY!’ – *sigh* take a seat. We might be here a while.”

In my previous article, I tried to make sense of the “GamerGate” drama

I couldn’t find a bigger non-story than if I went to TMZ to see the latest socks on some celebrity’s feet. This “gamergate” thing is just a heavily promoted meme of femo-fascists which of course generates a response from detractors. If we ignore it, it will go away and the fem brigade will have to find another way to poison the well…

This is true, and it’s been brewing much longer than that. Like I said in another thread, SJW-types have literally ruined the biggest gaming forum online, NeoGAF. It started years ago and is getting worse every day. The place has always been brain dead liberal, but now it’s full-on tail-chasing progressive. It makes posting and visiting the site hardly worthwhile.

Exactly. And when you point out to them that all they are doing is breeding fear and a victim mentality, they go on to cite all the other completely unrelated examples of how men threaten and harass them. They are using this non-issue to make everyone feel like they *think* they should feel, whether or not this actually affects anyone.

I think Peck is right on this one (although still dreadfully wrong with regard to the Ghostbusters). If you can make the publishers afraid of the cost imposed on them from bad press exceeding the game itself, they’ll avoid the risk of the bad press.

My impression is that it is the femo-fascists who would like nothing more than this controversy to go away. They’ve occupied the subculture’s “commanding heights” in terms of the press and awards process. If the controversy goes away, they’ve won.

Good luck getting that from proggie SJW types in the twitter mob. Reasoned, less hysterical discussion tends to require the ability to compose a rational thought and then express said thought in more than 140 characters.

On Facebook, I was conversing with a friend as to why some much attention was being paid to such a fringe group. One of her friends, a self-identifying feminist, started to chime in on the thread, suggesting that I need to think and act differently. In the context of explaining why I would handle these issues 1:1, and not give a platform to those perceived as the problem, I was mocked and condescended to for telling “women how they should think”.

At no point did I say anyone should think or act a certain way. I had been explaining how I act and react to these situations, including a first-hand example that was then lampooned as ‘the one time I stood up to someone’.

Simply put, like most other issues of this ilk, if you don’t fall in line with the liberal line of thinking, you’re an evil misogynist. But they never take a second look at their own language and whether that makes us even want to be a part of their conversation.

There are valid concerns, shared by at least some GamerGate supporters, about sex-based harassment in gaming groups and stereotypical portrayal of female characters in videogames.

No, concerns about portrayal of female characters is not a “valid” concern. Period, full stop. The only way you can make it a valid concern is to say that people should stick their noses into purely private activities and transactions to ensure that they meet some external standard. Fuck. That.

Now, harassment in gaming groups? What are we talking about here? Nasty emails and tweets? Are you kidding? What happened to the First Amendment, and the completely unrestricted right to leave a forum with too many assholes.

Nope. Sorry. I completely deny that there are any “valid concerns” with any of those things.

First amendment rights don’t apply to threats of physical harm. The challenge is demonstrating what is purely trash talk, and what is intended as a legit ‘threat’. The former category is probably the vast majority of comments, while the latter is what is getting attention.

And that is where the crux of their argument lies. Some of them believe that *any* talk of that kind is unacceptable if it makes women feel slighted. Since I’m not a gamer, I can’t say, but this article suggests it is a *very* small number of instances.

The most you can pull out of a threat to harm is an investigation. Per the 1A, the government can’t exercise prior restraint and can’t jail you for threatening words alone. If the threats are credible, it can justify some attention from the police, and if they identify specific details of a crime, it could even justify a warrant. But absent actual evidence of a real crime, nobody should be gagged or sent to jail.

What does that have to do with ‘ethics in gaming journalism’? If Anita Sarkeesian (who is not even a gaming journalist) makes some poorly argued youtube video, why do you have to call her a stupid cunt to make a counterargument?

You don’t. Why are none of these so-called “journalists” ever doing even the slightest research into her videos before they post them on their sites and rave about how great they are? Even the most mild criticism gets deleted. Which is exactly what’s going on here.

“ooh, someone said “cunt”. Thus every criticsm is herefore invalid and we will pretend that none of them ever happened. Except for the “cunt” one. That one is proof she’s right, somehow. And if you ask me to explain why that is, you’re just a neck-bearded misogynist”

oooh, someone said neckbeard misogynist. Did they publish your home address and threaten to rape you death as well? If the most mild criticism gets deleted (by who? where?) I strongly suspect it is related to the somewhat less mild criticism. Calling a woman stupid cunt for making a certain argument about video games does not mean your other arguments are invalid, but it makes people less interested in hearing them.

There does seem to be an inability of fans of your hobby (one I once enjoyed very much) to take criticism from a woman without going overboard. If you really want ethics in teh video game journalism (to the extent that’s even possible), maybe you should act ethically yourselves?

(2) Gaming journos and developers get called out on their unethical conduct.

(3) Gaming journos and developers lash out at those who accuse them of being unethical in traditional SJW fashion, by flinging accusations of bigotry and employing various social shaming/shunning techniques.

(4) The gamers who are attached by the journos and developers reply in kind, with the usual internet leavening of rudeness and stupidity.

(4) The gamers who are attached by the journos and developers reply in kind, with the usual internet leavening of rudeness and stupidity.

Do a search on twitter for #gamergate. Read.

You will see 4 is not as extreme as you think it is. The gamers have been far better at policing themselves then the journos have. In fact the gamers seem to identified at least one harasser of Anita and turns out he is a Brazilian game journalist.

True, except for one part: the “developers” aren’t actually developers, they are former humanities majors with no skills and tech-salary-envy. And when they flame out and people tell them that their product sucks, they blame their failures on discrimination.

sadly there are people that say otherwise… I’m not talking about the chat screen shots.

I’m more likely to believe them over a game developer, that made a shitty game and somehow got a few random great reviews… (it was a good idea, just badly done)

However, while the whole thing started with that one game developer. It’s turned into something much more. it’s started a cry from the gaming community for a transparent & honest journalism / reviews. not just from friend/lovers reviewing each others games, but also true reviews free from advertising dollars.

I thought the real nexxus of the problem was how said “girl who would sleep with any Game Journalist she could find” then used her vagina-derived influence to orchestrate attacks against these folks, who were apparently stealing some of the thunder from the “perpetually victimized” female-game-developer-camp….?

I can’t claim to understand the whole thing or care, i just know that *bitches be trippin’*

Highly popular games with an optional female lead include Skyrim, Fallout, and Mass Effect;

This is misleading. Those games don’t really have an “optional female lead”, which implies the default is male. You can’t even start the game (and yes, I’ve played all three) without first saying whether you want your player to be male of female. I mean, literally one of the very first things you have to do before gameplay starts is build your character. As either male or female.

They are truly and completely gender-neutral, as far as the character you play goes.

Can you still be a lizard? I feel like Lizard-people are under-represented in gaming.

Has anyone pointed out how in Fallout New Vegas, like, Everyone in the entire game is @#(*$ gay, and goes out of their way to tell you? yet the only heterosexual relationship you can get involved in is with an evil woman who runs a gladiatorial-deathmatch pit?

*no, now that i think about it, you can shack up with others, but frankly the game seems to say, “Just be gay: its easier for everyone.”

I found it a little irritating. I mean, they’re all talking about their gay love affairs, and I can’t even get with a prostitute without lying about something. It is basically one big hetero-shaming exercise.

“This page needs content. You can help by adding a sentence or an image!”

Is a not a so much

Apparently that page is unlinkable

Which is unfortunate, because every other article on the subject on “How unbelievably Gay FONV is” is a gigantic hugfest about how forward-thinking and politically correct they are, so Yay!

As one person noted, the game is “like a Pride Parade crashed into a paint factory”

“From playing through the game for hours and reading the different outcomes with some of the companions I was surprised just how “gay” this game is. As a male character I cannot hit on Cass successfully without her being all defensive but I have the option of sounding like a Legion butt pirate. Arcade Gannon is ousted as a homosexual if you have the “Confirmed Bachelor” perk. Veronica was apparently in love with a chick back at her old brotherhood compound, the dude at the Mohave station where you have to get a pardon for that imprisoned powder ganger dude (is gay), and that Cpl. Betsy over at Camp McCarran whose into, “Tall blondes” whom she can “Jump their pants” (she was butt raped by a fiend).

Now it’s not that I have anything against homosexuality but I’ve experienced no opportunities where I could pursue a deeper conversation with any of the games chicks“”

I think the point of the comments about this subject are not any kind of “Pro or Anti Gay!” false-dichotomy…

… its that, in a game that goes out of its way to shove characters individual sexuality in your face 24/7.. there are basically zero options for the character to engage in any kind of “normal” relations themselves. Either go gay, or keep it in your pants!

That’s also noting that the game has a built in ‘seduction’ option where you can use dialogue options to achieve different results – and the relative utility leans heavily in favor of the homosexual options. There aren’t very many (any?) significant straight characters to seduce.

Its sort of like the comment the other day about how progs will vigorously defend the rights of ‘pre-teen transexuals’ etc, then insist that teenage girls and boys are being ‘overly sexualized’ by media. Meanwhile, they’re baking Vagina Cookies for their kindergarteners.

They seem to think that “normal, healthy sexuality” is icky and needs repressing, but we need to have a fucking parade if their children are gay

Specific to the game world, it comes off as incredibly forced and unrealistic. naturally, the gaming journalists FAWNED over the thing

I can link the page fine from outside of Reason. Reason is translating HTML and URL escapes in the content of submitted posts into the literal characters, which of course makes no sense (I escaped the character for a reason) and breaks things in edge cases (like URLs where the character must be escaped, or legitimate uses of the greater-than character outside of HTML tags).

The proper escape is “% 3 F” (no spaces) but if I put that into my post (like this: ?) you see the question mark instead. This is not the correct behavior, but then again this is Reason, and randomly getting logged out or having your posts alternately swallowed or triplicated is common.

I am going to start a campaign to change the unrealistic portrayals of men in romance novels. They’re too often portrayed as impossibly young and handsome and muscled. It’s hurtful to men who aren’t like that. They especially need to put more old, fat, bald men on the covers.

One of the many reasons to hate feminism: its insistence on making all art “diverse”.

Screw that. If you don’t like certain video games because of the ways they depict women, don’t play them. Or better yet: make your own video games. You’re not entitled to a video game which suits your easily-offended tastes.

Seriously. Buzz off. I’m tired of feminists trying to regulate literature, movies, and games because they might represent women in a negative light. And? Get over it. It’s remarkable how people in the 21st century continue to act like victims.

Sure, when it comes to unborn girls (and boys) being tossed into trash cans, no one panics. When women are stoned to death by the forces of radical Islam (I’m a Muslim, by the way?in case you’re Ben Affleck), feminists don’t speak up.

But the minute that a video game depicts women scandalously, well, that’s when everyone goes crazy.

Agreed. And I’m also a consistent life ethicist. Anti-abortion, anti-abortive-birth-control, antiwar, anti-euthanasia, anti-assisted-suicide, anti-death-penalty, and anti-eugenics. I don’t just pick and choose when life suits me and when it doesn’t.

Heck, when liberals ask me if I’d be willing to support a certain (non-abortive) social program since I’m so pro-life, I respond by asking them if they would be willing to ban abortion if such a program passes. If they say yes, then I also respond with yes. Anti-libertarian? Perhaps. But when it comes to human life, I can’t compromise.

I respond by asking them if they would be willing to ban abortion if such a program passes. If they say yes, then I also respond with yes. Anti-libertarian? Perhaps. But when it comes to human life, I can’t compromise.

So you are willing to trade the liberty of others for your own self-satisfaction?

A crime that goes unpunished by the state is still a crime and the perpetrators are still criminals. If it so offends you, then put your own liberty on the line and punish them yourself.

But if you are so willing to be cavalier about the liberty of others, then you are not deserving of any respect for your “uncompromising” position.

Just to be clear, you said you’d be willing to support an abstract “social program” if it meant that the state would “ban abortion”. That “social program” is going to involve taxation and/or regulation, which means that people would be sent to jail for doing (or not doing) things that had nothing to do with abortion. Yet you (apparently) aren’t willing to risk going to jail yourself right now for doing to abortionists the things you want the state to do to them.

The state is not an instrument of justice, it is an instrument of violence. Even if it achieves justice through violence (debatable but I’m assuming it for the sake of argument), you are saying that you want to create new, unrelated injustices in order that some justice might be served.

That is the trade I’m talking about that makes you unworthy of respect.

I’m not an anarchist. Believe it or not, there are instances where the federal government must intervene. Slavery is one example, because no state government has the right to violate the rights of another human being. Subjugation by the individual states is no better than subjugation by the feds.

Another thing: I don’t believe in jailing people for failing to pay taxes, nor am I in favor of the IRS busting down your door if you don’t cough up your hard-earned money on April 15. Tax resistance has a proud history among figures like Thoreau and Gandhi, and I don’t buy into the garbage that left-wingers spew about the alleged patriotism of paying taxes.

Yes, the government should intervene when another person’s rights are being violated. That applies to both the lives of slaves and the lives of the unborn. I’d be fine with the state tossing a murderer in jail. Would it violate his rights? Some of them. But I doubt you’d find a libertarian who believes that prisons shouldn’t exist (public or private).

But thanks for telling me that I’m “unworthy of respect”. Is this Stefan Molyneux I’m talking to?

Moreover this was not an anarchist argument; you said you would trade the imposition of one injustice for the presumed rectification of another. Just as I would excoriate a leftist for saying “tax the rich” while minimizing his own tax burden, so too I excoriate you for saying “preserve life” while throwing people who’ve done harm to life into cages.

Tell me, what do you think should happen to murderers? Should they just be given a pat on the wrist? No, I’m for throwing them in jail; I’m not in favor of taking their lives, which is why I said I’m anti-death-penalty. I also said that I’m not in favor of coerced taxation. Don’t want to pay? Don’t.

I certainly don’t believe in throwing people in jail for not paying taxes.

Yeah, my typo doesn’t help, but the thing we’re trading here is “social program” for “banning abortion”. You say you’re not for throwing people in jail for not paying taxes, yet what do you think funds “social programs”? I will confess that I was unfairly aggressive (and slightly confusing) in my wording, but I also think you’re intentionally deflecting my point. It’s not about the aborters (per se), it’s about those other people who get locked up so that aborters get locked up too.

I apply the same logic I do to murderers to abortionists. They should be locked up for violating others’ liberties. But as you mentioned, you’re more interested in debating taxation.

And yes, I realize that taxes fund social programs. Frankly, I realize that social programs are ineffective. That much is clear. But liberals will never recognize that. I want the unborn to be treated with the same level of dignity as the born, so I’ll give in to liberals who want certain social programs in order to encourage people to keep their children as long as they ban abortion.

But yes, I don’t think that government-funded social programs really work. It’s just that liberals will never recognize that. You either want welfare, or you want the poor to starve. That’s their credo.

I stated above that I don’t think government welfare is effective, but liberals are incapable of seeing that. I don’t think that government welfare works, but if supporting it will get liberals to support banning abortion (since then there’s no excuse for ending a child’s life), I’ll do so. But I won’t support it without a guarantee of an abortion ban.

But that’s exactly what the pro-abortion camp does. It forces its decisions on other people who cannot say no, who cannot defend themselves, and who cannot even fight back. They literally impose their choices on the most helpless people imaginable: unborn children.

I don’t care if you gamble or use drugs. (Those are both bad decisions, but you’re only hurting yourself.) I also don’t care if you’re gay, since science shows that homosexuality is almost definitely genetic, not a lifestyle; I have no problem with gay marriage at all. But with abortion, you’re taking away someone else’s life, and just because they are small or comprised of a handful of cells doesn’t mean that they aren’t a unique individual deserving of protection. Plus, embryology clearly shows that life begins at conception.

I’m all for making video games in which women aren’t half-naked. (I absolutely, positively hate excessive “fan-service” in anime.) At the same time, I don’t feel the need to police “fan-service” in games unless they actually hurt people.

While McDermott makes some good points about group dynamics, it’s easy to see how such [harassing] behavior ? regardless of motive ? can create an environment where many women feel like second-class citizens.

Are they actually being murdered, raped, assaulted, or stolen from? No

Are they being excluded from online communities and multiplayer games? By and large no; and to the extent it has happened, it pales in comparison to what has been done by the SJWs against their opponents (which is not an excuse, but then this isn’t a crime, either)

I feel #GamerGate is a result of this shameful attitude being pushed by those in the gaming media with positions of power for a prolonged period of time.

It should come as no surprise to anybody involved in gaming that gaming journalists are the same sort of Political Correctness-oriented little-red-Marxians that also populate the traditional journalism media. And they only have themselves to blame, as gamers are most likely the same types who eschew conservative or even libertarian viewpoints about Self, the State and Morality.

Gamers are reaping what they sow. It is a good thing that they’re receiving a cup full of reality check, though. Hopefully, they’ll come to realize that the very people who claimed to know them are the very people that despised them with all their soul.

In 2012, Brendan Keogh, a journalist who writes for leading gaming media including Gamasutra and Polygon, posted a rant on his personal blog denouncing the controversial trailer for the game Hitman: Absolution, in which the lead character battles and kills a group of female assassins who arrive disguised as nuns, then strip off their robes to reveal tight neoprene outfits.

That trailer was pretty controversial. Not for being sexist, but more because something like that was so completely out of place with the general tone and style for the Hitman games that it became a BLAM.

I think it’s important to note that one of the most popular games of 2013, and arguably the best game of that year, was a game called The Last of Us. The two main characters were a middle aged man and a teenage girl, and while you play as the man for most of the game, you do play as the girl for a pretty harrowing section.

This is one of the best written and smartest games ever made, with fully realized, three dimensional characters, and even the heroine was portrayed in a way that was refreshing.

That’s great, but that’s not what the Sarkeesian types want. It’s not enough that there are some games that conform to their world views, they also want to prevent there from being games (especially popular ones) that do not.

I make up to USD90 an hour working from my home. My story is that I quit working at Walmart to work online and with a little effort I easily bring in around USD40h to USD86h? Someone was good to me by sharing this link with me, so now i am hoping i could help someone else out there by sharing this link?

Sarkeesian also faked a lot of the footage that she used. Just because you’re given the “free will” in a video game to kill women doesn’t mean that you have to do so in order to win, nor does it mean that the game promotes misogyny or violence against women. It’s like saying that “Grand Theft Auto” promotes terrorism. Yes, the player can go on a shooting spree in the game if he or she wants to, but it’s (for the most part) not the focus of the actual story.

Not gonna lie. I feel about as bad that people say mean and nasty things to feminists about as much as I am about people saying mean and nasty things to the Westboro Baptist Church. It couldn’t happen to more deserving people.

If you play online games you just need to be prepared for everyone you meet to be a gigantic jerk. It doesn’t really matter what gender they are. I read this entire ‘gamergate’ nonsense to revolve around the idea that online competitive gaming should be ‘nicer’ which is rather ludicrous. You get a bunch of anonymous humans together and have them compete and, no surprise, they smack talk.

I guess all the women online who talk smack don’t count. They are simply responding in kind because women clearly don’t talk smack unless they patriarchy makes them. This is because, at the heart of it, women aren’t responsible for their own actions according to feminism. Only men are. Also, men are responsible for all the actions of women as well. Ah, scapegoats.

Both men and women are equally responsible for their horrible online behavior. The difference seems to be that when women complain they’re taken seriously and when men complain no one listens as they are expected to ‘man up’ and ignore it.

If it wasn’t for double standards there would be no standards at all.

Also, and this is my last point, there are plenty of games that portray both genders as some ridiculous ideal. Go play some TERA and tell me those male models aren’t eye candy for lonely women. I guess it doesn’t count when men are shown to have bulging muscles and cod pieces. He-man is every bit as unrealistic of a model as Barbie folks.

Every time I hear “Gamergate” I feel old. It’s like the day I first realized that I don’t know what to do with Twitter; like I mostly know how to “use” it, but I just don’t know why I ever would. I don’t really know what Gamergate is, and the more I hear about it the less I “get” it. I suspect that’s because it really IS a non-issue.

That said, I have never understood why people think they can use their own vulnerability or weakness as a weapon. Why would I give a fuck about my “othering” someone? I did something that offended you? Sucks for you, chief. Somebody called you a little bitch and your stirring retort was to complain that you’re being “bullied?” Well, yeah, no shit! Stop being a pussy and you won’t be treated like one!

In all seriousness, I get having hurt feelings because someone said something shitty that struck a nerve, or because you’re just not in a good place, or whatever. Totally understandable, normal human situation. Attacking someone with the fact of your own weakness, need, or chapped ass, however, is totally asinine. Don’t be so excited about being a soppy, milquetoast, pain-in-the-ass beta.

And is it me or is this primarily a hipster thing? You don’t see a lot of people who don’t own thick-rimmed glasses or wear an ironic moustache on the warpath against the meanies

It’s a lefty thing. Solidarity with the oppressed and all that. Or in more common, “liberal” parlance: it’s seen as an extension of “being nice.” To Democrats, libertarians and conservatives are “not nice” because we don’t want to “be nice” by stopping “hate speech,” giving the poor enough money and services to eliminate poverty and disease and bad luck, and so on. Ideas like “people shouldn’t act like pussies” and “freedom of speech” are of limited importance to people like that.

“…Nearly two-thirds of the women?63 percent?reported having experienced “sex-based taunting, harassment, or threats while playing video games online.” Ugh, get in line. That percentage is probably even higher for men, since they play in larger numbers and put in more time playing as a whole. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve been called “fag”, told to, “suck my dick”, been tea-bagged from my inferior play, told how badly I just or will soon be rapped, etc… The difference is almost entirely perceptual – I don’t interpret any of it as sexual harassment. It’s certain sexual in nature, its certainly calculated to humiliate, and to intimidate, but its ultimately trash talk and hollow, with not real intent behind it. I’m not an apologist for crass, lewd, infantile, or sexist behavior, but some skin needs to thicken, and some context needs to be had.

I think most men, when questioned about online harassment and sexual harassment, would answer “no” even if they’d received the sort of “abuse” you mention above, because they just (correctly) brush it off s trash talk.

Girls, on the other hand, are being conditioned by feminist rhetoric into believing that the whole world is against women, literally, and that any (and I do mean any) criticism or abuse that comes their way is very serious misogynistic hate from the patriarchy-rape-culture that’s out to stop them being an engineer or some shit.

What women don’t seem to get (or like much) is the fact that video games (along with porn) is a replacement for women in general. In her book, “Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters”, Dr. Helen Smith details how today’s anti-male society is causing men to “drop out”.

From the book summary:

“As Men on Strike demonstrates, men aren’t dropping out because they are stuck in arrested development. They are instead acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands and providers. In addition, men are going on strike, either consciously or unconsciously, because they do not want to be injured by the myriad of laws, attitudes and hostility against them for the crime of happening to be male in the twenty-first century.”

What does it say about women that a relationship with a machine is easier and more comfortable than a relationship with a woman?

You reap what you sow. Women have made it so difficult or painful for men to engage in a “normal” relationship that they find video games and porn preferable to actual women. And no, we’re not talking about the 35-year-old who still lives in his parents’ basement. This is a growing trend of young men opting out of the female “paradise”.

#gamergate signals that civil society is alive and well and more willing to pick up pitchforks and torches than previously thought. It signals the collapse in trust of the statist meta-context being pushed by the shrill and increasingly frantic “Social Justice Warriors”, and a hankering that is more widespread that often credited for a return to quaint notions like integrity and objectivity.

My neighbor’s half-sister makes $75 /hour on the computer . She has been fired for eight months but last month her payment was $17951 just working on the computer for a few hours. visit.——– http://www.jobsfish.com